Pokémon Sword and Shield is limiting the number of Pokémon available in the game to those found in the game’s new Galar region.
Though the Galar region will feature a range of creatures from all Pokémon generations, unlike previous entries, you won’t be able to import every single creature we’ve seen so far.
The assumption was Pokémon Home, the newly announced service that would allow you to upload creatures from Sun and Moon, last year’s Pokémon Let’s Go and also Pokémon Go to store in an online vault, would allow you to transfer everything to the new game – but this is not the case.
“In previous games that worked with Pokémon Bank service, you were able – for example on Sun and Moon – bring over all Pokemon even if they weren’t in the Alola Pokédex,” Junichi Masuda explained on an Nintendo Treehouse stream during E3 2019.
Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield Gameplay – Nintendo Treehouse: Live | E3 2019 Watch on YouTube
“But with the transition to the Nintendo Switch hardware, being much more powerful and allowing us to be a lot more expressive with each of the individual Pokémon.
“Now we’re well over 800 Pokemon species in the games, at Game Freak we really spent a lot of time thinking about what the best way to move forward was – really preserving the quality of all the different Pokemon, while also taking into account the battle balance of having so many different Pokemon available, all within a limited development time so we don’t make fans wait too long for every new entry in the series.”